Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

justice.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 392 posts

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#251

Post by deathgrips »

some_furry wrote: post #249
deathgrips wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A statement from the user who submitted it, including their unverifiable copy of the offensive message. The law is not computer code. They don't need to break ciphertext to get a warrant.

You can do this thing called "message franking" to make it more verifiable, if you want. The downside is, context matters. If you report messages out-of-order or with important context deleted, you can trick investigators into thinking something was said or implied that actually wasn't. It needs to be carefully designed. (I blog about cryptography, but you should ask a cryptographer if you want to design something li…

I don't design message apps. I just know that law enforcement did just fine before the internet when most communication (face to face, over the phone) wasn't recorded or verifiable.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#252

Post by velosol »

gwright wrote: post #226
mmazing wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that depends - is it a frequent occurrence, historically?

It happens all the time. It is a completely mundane part of the daily functioning of government.

Further there are often laws that basically state "here's some general guide, executive agency X will figure out the specifics and publish that in the Fed Register as regulations."

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#253

Post by Spivak »

some_furry wrote: post #209
deathgrips wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turn it over to law enforcement. A single chat message is rarely a crime, but can be used to find further evidence of crime.

Turn what over to law enforcement? The ciphertext and timestamp?

If we’re talking about content that you literally don’t have access to and can’t see because it’s encrypted, like iMessage or Signal then you don’t need Section 230 protection because you aren’t moderating content.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#254

Post by Spivak »

hughw wrote: post #157
t-writescode wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a reference to the Biblical parable of the Good Samaritan. It’s not some racist jab.

I well understand that. My question is whether modern day residents of, or emigrants from, Samaria feel comfortable with the Bad Samaritan characterization. If it were a large demographic in the U.S., there might be a reaction. Then the question becomes, how large a population do you need before you have to speak carefully about a group.

Yeah, I feel like it’s really weird to have such dissonance about this on HN. Like can you imagine if the phrase was something like Good Chinaman? There would be an uproar.

To me this is like learning that word for getting scammed is just a dig at the Romani.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#255

Post by judge2020 »

qball wrote: post #154
saurik wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so I was under the impression that if you are say, a telephone network, that people can't sue you for stuff people do during phone calls, under the premise that the phone company doesn't moderate phone calls; and my understanding of the "bargain struck" is then that online web forums felt that centralized moderation was absolutely critical to spam prevention and search/discovery services (I disagree on the practi…

That impression is correct; the precedent is here ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubby,_Inc._v._CompuServe_Inc .). A lot of people don't really seem to understand that about S. 230- services that exist basically to pass messages have never needed the protection and that won't change. The best example outside of messaging services is probably content delivery networks, and I'll pick on CloudFlare because they're a gr…

> As long as CloudFlare is fine with just taking money and serving content, no matter whose it is, they have the legal immunity as intended. As soon as they decide (on a whim) to deny service based on content, as they did a while back, that legal immunity vanishes. It would be catastrophic to their business to make that decision (especially considering everything else CloudFlare hosts), and that's the point.

Except that they already do moderate based on content (malware, CP, etc) and don't have this immunity. The only reason they haven't been sued is because no lawyer or legal team is going to take on 8chan or random malware websites, and state-level DOJs don't have bad actors knocking on their door with the public's support behind them.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#256

Post by judge2020 »

mmazing wrote: post #199
ROARosen wrote: post #77

I don't care for most of it except this: >> Carve-Out for Actors Who Purposefully Blind Themselves and Law Enforcement to Illicit Material >>...it makes little sense to apply “Good Samaritan” immunity to a provider that intentionally designs or operates its services in a way that impairs its ability to identify criminal activity occurring on (or through) its services, or to produce relevant information to government…

Does that impact VPN providers?

Most certainly. Probably ISPs too since now police can't wiretap and listen in on connections to forums.att.com to stop people from posting illegal content there. Except that this law will be selectively enforced to reduce freedom and spy on the public's communications.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#258

Post by nkozyra »

tomcam wrote: post #233
tdrp wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a user I don't like it but as an app/website provider, it significantly delays spammers, giving them the illusion that what they're doing is working so they should just maintain the status quo. If instead you outright ban them, they adjust or learn about your anti-spam algorithms and just keep going.

Wonder if one answer would be to move potential spam, etc. to a separate-but-equal area. So if you're in /r/Politics and start advertising your get-rich-quick scheme your post is moved to /r/PoliticsSandbox.

That removes the "shadow," unless you present only to the submitter that the content is in the intended space.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#259

Post by nkozyra »

djur wrote: post #166
tangjurine wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Section 5c is particularly problematic. It disallows shadow-bans if I'm reading correctly. Can you explain more, I'm not really seeing it... Also how is disallowing shadowbanning problematic? I always never liked it.

What's the legitimate government interest in disallowing shadowbanning?

Well "legitimate" is open for interpretation.

I'd say this administration has resonated with its base by treating bans as politically-motivated.

Re: DOJ unveils proposed Section 230 legislation

#260

Post by klyrs »

shadowgovt wrote: post #155
yunohn wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a systemic issue on hackernews. People forgetting reality exists, and always pointing at the rules and acting as if they're infallible. You'd think /hackers/ would understand that rules are for show. I've seen this regarding serious legislation like this or even something as mundane as Apple's app store "guidelines".

> You'd think hackers would understand that rules are for show. I may be misinterpreting your wording here (my apologies if I am), but I'd assume the opposite. I'd think people who operate in a realm where text becomes action executed by a machine designed wholly around faithful, reliable execution of text fed to it would come to learn the reality-defining power of rules.

Can't social engineer without understanding how human agents differ from mechanical ones. Can't hack without understanding the difference between specification and implementation. To know C is to understand the true meaning of "undefined behavior."

From my social experience in high school, the board game rules nerds were more likely to become programmers than lawyers. The worst of them went on to be a pro poker player.

Post reply on HN